Συζήτηση Κυριάκος Μητσοτάκης - Demis Hassabis | Athens Innovation Summit 2025

Good evening dear prime minister, dear ministers, members of the Greek parliament, dear friends. Welcome to the second Athens Innovation Summit at the Odon of Feraldo Saticos. I'm Cosandos Vogindulu, the chairwoman of Endeavor Greece, and together with our managing director, Panayot Scarabinis. It is our honor to host you at what promises to be a remarkable night at the intersection of innovation, leadership, and the future of technology. Endeavor with its presence in more than 50 global markets is known around the world as the organization that accelerates high impact entrepreneurship. We support our entrepreneurs scale their businesses, create new jobs, and build world-class success stories. But the devil isn't just driven by growing bigger and faster. We're equally dedicated to growing better together by creating a multiplier effect that transforms entire economies. In 2022, Endeavor Greece launched the first ever Athens Innovation Summit with a simple but powerful vision in mind. By gathering together international innovators here at the very place where democracy was born, we could create a global platform to discuss the future of entrepreneurship and how to ensure that innovation makes the world fairer, more resilient, and more prosperous. This iconic venue served as an inspiration, pushing us to think more deeply not just about how to accelerate entrepreneurship, but also why we accelerate it. We would like to thank the Ministry of Culture for giving us the opportunity to hold this timely essential global dialogue at this incredible theater. And three years later, we are thrilled to return to the Eurodon. Yet this moment calls for a different kind of reflection to advocate for ethical innovation and to rethink what true power is all about. The times have changed. Never before have we felt so strongly the responsibility to bring to the forefront the ethical and complex questions that innovation and technology with their unprecedented advances pose to humanity. Never before have we felt so strongly the responsibility to guide and awaken the enthusiastic generations already engaging with AI with your accountability with this tool. By gathering here we are standing at the very place where some of the boldest, brightest and biggest ideas were born, molded and put into action with incredible impact changing the way we live to this day. In ancient Athens, innovation was leadership. It was power. But service to the people was its only calling. Today's high impact entrepreneurs follow paths that started in ancient Greece and Athens stands as a timeless symbol of what is possible by humanity. We're hosting this night because if we believe that heritage can guide us to a better future, then Athens has definitely a global role to play. The Athens Innovation Summit by Endeavor Greece is on that mission and we're not alone. This night is only made possible with the support of more than 100 startups, organizations, and corporations that came together. We're truly a one community and we're deeply grateful to all of you. One of our closest partners this year is Google Greece. And now we would like to invite Peggy Donaku to share a few words in Greek.

Thank you, Peggy. It is in this spirit of innovation, global dialogue, and visionary leadership that we are thrilled to welcome three remarkable guests tonight. Starting with our honorary guest, a pioneer at the forefront of artificial intelligence, a Nobel Prize scientist, entrepreneur, co-founder and CEO of Google Deep Mind with a career spanning neuroscience, computer science, and artificial intelligence. He has led some of the most significant breakthroughs in modern AI, including Alph Go and Alpha Fold. He's also a leading voice in the ethical development of AI advocating for transparency, safety, and human-centered design. Dr. Disasse. Joining him is a leader who has helped position Greece at the forefront as a forward-looking digitally driven country. Under his leadership, Greece has implemented bold reforms in digital governance, education, innovation, fostering a culture of entrepreneurship and technological advancement. He understands the role of policy in shaping how transformative technologies like AI are used and how they serve people, not just progress. Prime Minister of the Helanic Republic, Kiryakos Motakis. Their conversation will be moderated by the co-founder and CEO of Endeavor. An entrepreneur and best-selling author recognized as a leading global voice on entrepreneurship. She has been named as America's best leaders by US News and innovator for the 21st century by Time. Under her leadership endeavor has expanded to more than 50 countries and helping thousands of entrepreneurs scale their businesses and transform their markets. Linda Roerberg. The conversation you're about to listen delves into the role of artificial intelligence and our fast changing world from healthcare and energy governance and education to the future of technology. We invite you to engage with the dilemmas, the opportunities and the accountability we all share in shaping a future where innovation serves the common good and to ensure the humanity and the wisdom of our past remains a driving force. Enjoy the evening. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome on stage the Greek Prime Minister Kiryakos Mitotakis, the co-founder of Google Deep Mind, Sir Dennis Hassabis, and the co-founder of Endeavor, Lindel Watenberg.

Yes. Good evening everyone. I can't think of a more perfect setting or a more perfect pairing for tonight's conversation. We are seated at the southwest slope of the Acropolis, the birthplace of democracy, philosophy, and drama to discuss one of the most dramatic moments in human history, the rise of artificial intelligence and the challenge it poses to all of us to get this moment right. I'm joined by Prime Minister Kuryakos Mitsutakis who has been a strong advocate for innovation while also emphasizing the need for ethical frameworks and vice demos who has been at the forefront of this revolution while also advocating for educating citizens on the limitations of AI. I'm honored to be with you both and look forward to our conversation. So I'd like to frame tonight's conversation around three larger themes. One, what can we learn from past moments of enormous human change, the golden age in Athens, the industrial revolution to shape our approach to today? Two, the current dialogue around AI centers on Silicon Valley versus China. And yet, as we see in the 50 countries where Endeavor operates, innovation is everywhere. We're big proponents of what we call the power of elsewhere. So question number two, what can we learn from a country like Greece and a London-based company like DeepMind that can help inspire founders everywhere? And three, with the prospect of general and artificial intelligence or AGI, it poses a unique challenge to human civilization. So, we'll spend most of our conversation in this area and ask you both to draw on your experiences to help us navigate the inherent tensions of the moment. So, let's dive in. Prime Minister Mitsotakis, you and I met many years ago studying philosophy and social theory at Harvard. And there was even a class called thinking about thinking that began with a focus in ancient Athens. So we're here at the Herodian. As you think about the future of AI, what values from Greece's past should guide us?

Well, first of all, it's a real privilege to be sharing the stage with Neb. Thank you so much for being here and for supporting us in this fascinating journey to understand how we can use AI in a truly positive manner. It's amazing to be sitting here. Usually we don't appreciate how this theater looks from the stage but I think it is sometimes worthwhile to think and draw lessons from classical Athens. Although we need to point out that this Odon was built during the Roman era and to understand what was it that caused this amazing innovation in terms of organizing our societies and what forced Athenians to abandon old systems of political regimes in favor of democracy. And at a time when democracy is under challenge everywhere, looking back to ancient Athens and trying to draw lessons from that unique experiment, acknowledging its limitations, I think is very much worthwhile understanding the true power of debate, the necessity to be able to convince citizens who will then vote altogether about the collective actions of the city and also to recognize what Pericles said in his funeral oration which I always try to remember that if you don't do well in a city that is flourishing the city will find ways to support you. But if you do well in a city that doesn't do well as a whole, you will probably also end up not thriving. So connecting the benefit of the city to individual flourishment is something which was very much at the heart of Athenian democracy. So I always like to look back and to draw lessons from this period. And I think these days this is a very healthy exercise.

Sir Dennis, you have also spoken a lot of thinking about thinking and the need to draw lessons from the past. I know you're a student of the Athenian philosophers and with regard to another great disruption, you've said that AI will be 10 times bigger and 10 times faster than the industrial revolution. So take us behind the scenes in the labs with your engineers and designers. Are you talking about Aristotle and Plato? And are you worrying about a new Denzian London?

Wonderful. So let's move on to the topic of innovation elsewhere. Dennis, you were born in London. Your father was Greek Cypriot, your mother Chinese Singaporean, and yet when you raised capital from American investors, they told you you had to move to Silicon Valley. You resisted and stayed in London. Tell us how you made that decision and what have been the pros and the cons.

I loved by the way meeting Giannis of Reflection AI, a Greek founder in AI who worked for you at Google DeepMind and I've been saying that Endeavor is all about starting the tech mafias and you have your like the PayPal mafia and you have your deep mind mafia already. It's amazing. Mr. Prime Minister, you are working hard to make Greece a place that really matters in terms of innovation elsewhere. You and Endeavor Greece have collaborated on an initiative called Innovation Nation and Pharaoh's AI is one of the first AI factories in all of Europe. We were talking earlier and you reminded me that you worked as a venture capitalist before you went into politics and have cared about this topic for a long time. So describe your local and regional efforts on innovation and globally how do you plan to compete for talent like Dennis?

Well first of all thank you Ne for mentioning the important role that Europe can play in this new emerging world where it seems to me that most of the discussion involves the competition between the United States and China. And the truth is that when we talk about Europe, we usually think of a supranational entity that is very good at regulating but not very good at innovating. And I think there is some truth to that and one of the main missions that we as European leaders have agreed to is how do we make Europe as a whole more entrepreneurial? How do we break down barriers between countries? How do we create a true single market which really does not exist in digital services? I'm sure this is the experience also of a lot of Greek startups and how can we actually also raise capital at the European level to ensure that our startups or Greek startups don't necessarily have to be acquired by the big US companies in order to charter their own future path. So there is I think a big European dimension in terms of fostering innovation and we have made good use of these European initiatives and the European funds by setting up one of the first seven AI factories in Greece which is essentially a structure revolving around a very powerful supercomputer that is in the process of being built in the city of Lavrio, but also trying to make sure that our startups have access to cutting edge computing power and can actually develop AI solutions out of Greece. And I must pay tribute to the tremendous work that Endeavor has done in fostering what is an incredibly dynamic startup ecosystem in Greece. I was a venture capitalist many many years ago. I set up the first incubator in Greece back in 2001 and never would I have imagined that this dynamism would emerge out of Greece. And it's a complete change in the mindset of young people thinking about entrepreneurship and actually taking the risk to set up their own companies. So for us I see AI as a transformative technology that can really allow the country to leapfrog other European countries in our effort to catch up with the rest of Europe. It's as simple as that. And this means not just supporting our ecosystem of entrepreneurs which is something that we do through incentives and supporting more venture capital but also trying to use artificial intelligence at the level of the government. This was a topic of the discussion that we had today in terms of becoming much more efficient but also in terms of identifying specific verticals where AI can truly be transformative. Healthcare, education, civil protection. Just to mention a few of these vertical areas where we really want to be at the forefront of applying artificial intelligence for the benefit of all Greeks. So I'm very enthusiastic and very excited about the prospect of this endeavor that we have started to implement and really extremely bullish about the future of the Greek entrepreneurial ecosystem.

That's wonderful. And I would never have imagined that we would be able to fill this auditorium, 45 minutes before Greece play a very important basketball game. Thank you for being here. Well, we will get you out in time. And Giannis is actually a supporter of Endeavor, so we love him. And I should say that everyone met our incredible chairwoman, Pastansa, as well as our managing director, Panos, but it was your wife, an entrepreneur, Morava, who first convinced us to bring Endeavor to Greece.

Yeah, I should point out that I know Linda since we were classmates at Harvard College. I tried to convince her to bring Endeavor to Greece. I failed, but Marva succeeded. So, well done. She's the founder of Endeavor.

Okay, so those were the warm-up questions. Now, let's dive into some of the tensions, starting with innovation versus regulation. So Demis, you're part of an industry that is famous for its move fast and break things philosophy, which translates to government, keep your hands off. And yet you've said that perhaps AI was released from the lab too early. So now that the genie is out of the bottle, are there opportunities for governments to regulate AI or is your colleague at Microsoft Mustafa Suleyman right that containment is no longer possible?

I love that answer. Mr. Prime Minister, what is your answer to the question of regulating an AI? And what can national governments like yours do? Or should there be some sort of supranational structure akin to what we did in the monetary system following World War II? Some are calling for a Bretton Woods of AI.

Well, I've been thinking a lot about this question and unfortunately there is no easy answer. I do believe that at some point some sort of global arrangement will be necessary especially an understanding between the US and China that there are real risks involved in this technology and that if this becomes a race to who develops first the most powerful model then there is really no incentive to regulate because there are commercial incentives and geopolitical incentives just to be the first to get your hands on this extremely powerful technology. And this of course creates an environment where no one talks about regulation and very few people are as thoughtful as Demis about the consequences and the ramifications of this incredible technology that we have created. In Europe, we have our own regulatory framework which I think is reasonably well thought out and I'm talking about the AI Act. But at some point we don't want to be a regulatory black box in a world where no one is talking about regulation. So I think it is important to engage both with the United States and with China and certainly to engage with the big technology companies. And in my mind we need to pick our regulatory battles in a smart way. So we need to set some clear priorities. For example, for me and for Greece there are two areas that concern me profoundly. The first is the health and the mental health of kids and teenagers. And the second is the impact of AI on our democratic discourse. And we were discussing this with Demis. We're going to have elections in two years. And I think the number of deep fakes that we will see by then is going to be a real challenge to the democratic discourse and to actually getting to the truth of anything if we don't know what is true and what is created by artificial intelligence. And especially when it comes to the question of mental health of kids and teenagers, there I think we need to be stricter also with the big technology companies in terms of either pushing for a design that really takes into account the relative age of the users or even considering more radical options such as banning the use of social media under a certain age if we cannot succeed otherwise in mitigating the negative impact of our kids having access to smartphones which really have been built simply with a simple purpose of maximizing engagement. And again, this is probably a question relevant to social media, less relevant to artificial intelligence. But of course, as these algorithms become smarter, they will also become smarter in terms of capturing our attention. And when we're talking about the brain of a child or a teenager, we're really running a massive experiment with the mental health of the next generation. And I don't think we are fully cognizant of the risks that we are assuming. So I would really like to engage with the big tech companies and to make them understand that they need to be part of this discussion and they need to be bolder in thinking about this challenge. And if regulation is necessary, then we should not hesitate to regulate that space smartly. One last point, I think Greece has led probably Europe in terms of the technologies around age verification. So we now have what we call a kids wallet which is a platform that allows parents to set up the phones of their kids in a way that suits their own preferences and choices. It's a first step in the direction of at least making parents and kids aware that being addicted to the phone and being addicted to constant scrolling is probably not the best thing you can do as a kid or as a teenager.

Yeah. And I'd love Dennis to have the chance to respond. Let me just add that one of our classmates two weeks ago announced that one of their children who was in their 20s had taken their life, left no note and the parents discovered that they had been conversing not with Google but with one of your competitors AI and had used that as their therapist and friend and decided to take their own life. And it's just I'd love the chance for you to respond because this is a real thing that parents are worried about.

Another area where there is dissonance between political leaders and tech leaders is whether the future will be shaped by scarcity or abundance. Mr. Prime Minister, I suspect that a lot of your energy is focused on managing the real world consequences of climate change. And yet we hear from the futurists that AI will solve all these problems ushering in an era of radical abundance and all we need to do is shift our zero sum mindset. So as a leader, how are you balancing the short-term anxiety with the long-term promises?

Well, Keynes just said in the long term we're all dead. So it's a very valid question and I think that if one were to try to imagine the world in 2050, I think a lot of the challenges that we are facing today such as nuclear fusion, unlimited cheap energy, these problems will probably be solved by then. The question is how do we get from where we are today to where we will be in 25 years and there is no doubt in my mind that AI can create tremendous productivity gains and hence create tremendous wealth. Now the real question becomes okay if there is a lot of wealth to be created, how is this wealth going to be split and how is everyone really going to benefit from this amazing technological revolution? We were discussing what happened during the industrial revolution and this transformation is going to be much more significant and there was a lot of social upheaval and we should have no doubt in our mind that a lot of jobs will be threatened and will be destroyed as a result of this revolution. And we're not just talking about blue collar jobs. We're talking about white collar jobs. And that is going to cause a lot of anxiety. It will put our pension systems under a lot of stress. So you will have productivity gains for industry and for capital especially the big companies that are developing these technologies or the companies that are actually using it in order to enhance their productivity. So wealth will be created but you will also have a significant displacement of jobs. And I think it's already happening in the United States. If you look at the labor market, I don't think we are ready as a society about this reality which will hit us relatively soon. So there was always this discussion regarding the destruction of jobs and the creation of new jobs. And every time in every big technological revolution people were very pessimistic only to realize that maybe more or different jobs or better jobs were created in the future. But there is going to be a period of transition. So unless people actually see personal benefits to this revolution, they will tend to become very skeptical. And if they see obscene wealth being created within very few companies, this is a recipe for significant social unrest. So I would very much urge us to engage in a more substantive discussion with the technology companies to at least acknowledge the fact that these changes in the labor market may actually happen sooner than we think because at the end of the day if AI is a productivity tool it enhances clearly the productivity of workers but it will also replace human labor and every corporation will have an incentive to do that if at the end of the day the return on its investment is positive.

We will get back to the question of jobs. Demis, I want to focus a little bit on this notion of radical abundance. And it does feel like we're being told daily that a cure for cancer, limitless clean energy, lifespans to 150 with interstellar travel is like weeks away. And you won a Nobel Prize, shared a Nobel Prize for Alphafold, which correctly predicted the structure of 3D proteins. And that is amazing. But actually skeptics are now comparing this era to the dotcom bubble and the Atlantic went so far as to call AI a mass delusion event. So are you worried that your colleagues are overpromising and underdelivering and that people aren't feeling the benefits of all the wonderful things you're speaking of?